It’s not like Wisconsin, where cold-weather advice seems to begin and end with the booze.

“The expert advice for Packers fans looking to brave the near-zero cold at Lambeau Field on Sunday is the same a parent would give to a young adult heading out for a night on the town: Ease up on the booze and keep your clothes on,” says the story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Alcohol gives that flushed sensation, a “feeling that you’re warm, when you’re really not,” said James Gast, a family practitioner in the Bellin Health Family Medical Center in Ashwaubenon, the heart of Packers country.

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Bob Collins has been with Minnesota Public Radio since 1992, emigrating to Minnesota from Massachusetts. He was senior editor of news in the ’90s, ran MPR’s political unit, created the MPR News regional website, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day laments that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.

NewsCut is a blog featuring observations about the news. It provides a forum for an online discussion and debate about events that might not typically make the front page. NewsCut posts are not news stories.

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Whaler, it isn’t being stupid all the time. Sometimes it’s just people wanting to have fun and making errors in judgement. I certainly did my share of that when I was younger. It’s just that our insitutions are very unrforgiving and that needs to change.

I just got back from Europe and they are a lot more mellow about most things, but they also look out for each other more. Why didn’t someone go help that poor guy in the snow? It is our self centered, individualistic culture that is too blame here, as much as the booze and cold weather.

minn whaler

When information is given in numerous ways and repeatedly, such as alcohol is bad in extremely cold temperatures, it is a matter of stupidity. Ignorance is lack of information… stupidity is given information and still choosing to do that which one has been educated against.

I never said I didn’t do stupid things in the past. We all have. I’m sure someone did help that poor alcoholic in the snow. As for this evening, I can’t help but think someone will die of hypothermia simply because they drank at the Packers’ game. Which has nothing to do with us being an individualist society. It has to do with equating alcohol with fun.

Candi

I actually experienced a Packer game at Lambeau for the first time back in November and from what I saw, Green Bay’s economy depends on the drunk nuts falling in the snow. We stayed in a filthy room at the Days Inn that cost $200 a night (minimum two night stay). This was a room that, on any other night in any other town, would have been about $80. Every bar surrounding the stadium was packed to the point of over-capacity, overflowing out into the parking lots under tents. There was no glass to be found anywhere – only plastic “to-go” cups and the police were only there to control traffic. I’m not sure what time the bars opened Sunday morning, but, judging by the condition of many of the patrons, it was long before we sat down to breakfast at the Stadium View at 9:00. When I walked outside at 8:00, there were already folks wandering the streets with beer in their hands. This was a regular season game and it was 50+ degrees out. But the Cheese Heads are hardcore and I imagine this weekend was just as crazy, negative temps and all.

As far as the guy on the video goes, that sort of behavior is pretty much encouraged in the mile plus radius of Lambeau Stadium. The area survives for that reason only and there is no chance any of the bars were going to stop serving anyone for fear they might walk out into the cold and freeze to death. It’s the Green Bay culture. Strange, but that’s the way it is.

Minn whaler

According to Webster’s dictionary culture is:

1. the act of developing by education and training.

2. refinement of intellectual and artistic taste.

3. the customary beliefs, social forms and material traits of a racial, religious or social group.

Hmmm, not seeing where stupid has been excluded from defining a culture. If getting so drunk you pass out in a snowbank, before during and after a football game maybe Green Bay Culture, but that does not mean it isn’t stupid and it also goes along way in reinforcing my original comment… “You just can’t fix stupid.”

Candace L

Whaler,

Just because YOU don’t understand Green Bay, does not mean it is stupid. Sociology 101 is about needing to be part of a culuture before one can truly understand it. It sounds to me like you have never been off the Island. Green Bay is a way cool and–yes, cultured place. I don’t think you can stand there and judge if you haven’t been a part of the fun.